HR: 17:15h
AN: H34E-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science Inc. (CUAHSI) Science Plan: A Community-based Infrastructure Initiative
AU: * Wilson, J L
EM: jwilson@nmt.edu
AF: New Mexico Tech, MSEC 242, Socorro, NM 87801
AU: Dressler, K
EM: kxd13@psu.edu
AF: Pennsylvania State University, 129 Land and Water Research Bldg, University Park, PA 16802
AU: Hooper, R P
EM: rhooper@cuahsi.org
AF: CUAHSI, 2000 Florida Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009
AB: The river basin is a fundamental unit of the landscape and water in that defined landscape plays a central role in shaping the land surface, in dissolving minerals, in transporting chemicals, and in determining species distribution. Therefore, the river basin is a natural observatory for examining hydrologic phenomena and the complex interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes that control them. CUAHSI, incorporated in 2001, is a community-based research infrastructure initiative formed to mobilize the hydrologic community through addressing key science questions and leveraging nationwide hydrologic resources from its member institutions and collaborative partners. Through an iterative community-based process, it has been previously proposed to develop a network of hydrologic infrastructure that organizes around scales on the order of 10,000 km2 to examine critical interfaces such as the land-surface, atmosphere, and human impact. Data collection will characterize the stores, fluxes, physical pathways, and residence time distributions of water, sediment, nutrients, and contaminants coherently at nested scales. These fundamental properties can be used by a wide range of scientific disciplines to address environmental questions. This more complete characterization will enable new linkages to be identified and hypotheses to be tested more incisively. With such a research platform, hydrologic science can advance beyond measuring streamflow or precipitation input to understanding how the river basin functions in both its internal processes and in responding to environmental stressors. That predictive understanding is needed to make informed decisions as development and even natural pressures stress existing water supplies and competing demands for water require non-traditional solutions that take into consideration economic, environmental, and social factors. Advanced hydrologic infrastructure will enable research for a broad range of multidisciplinary science questions. The CUAHSI science agenda has evolved through community input and research into several unifying theme areas, or categories. Three example categories are: forcing, internal processing, and evolution. Within each category, coherent (integrated in space and time) physical, chemical and biological data are needed to answer specific science questions. For example, in the case of "forcing": How do patterns in rainfall influence predictability of floods and droughts? Floods and droughts have long been considered random events. However, we now know that there are decadal patterns in rainfall and that rainfall recycles within the basin thereby intensifying floods and droughts. How does the internal state of the system combine with external forcing to determine the occurrence of hydrologic extremes?
UR: http://www.cuahsi.org
DE: 0400 BIOGEOSCIENCES
DE: 1800 HYDROLOGY
DE: 1804 Catchment
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005